Undergraduate named as Millennium Fellow of United Nations

“These 12 undergraduate leaders are demonstrating through scholarship and action how to meaningfully contribute to society with empathy, humility, and inclusion as guiding values”

A St John’s undergraduate is one of 12 ‘extraordinary’ Cambridge students chosen for an international leadership programme that works towards United Nations goals. 

Amy Bottomley has been awarded a Millennium Fellowship by United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and Millennium Campus Network (MCN), which is designed to help student leaders develop the skills and values they need to work in the social impact sector.

The course programme runs until December and will see the Millennium Fellows launch various projects in keeping with the UN’s sustainable development goals and UNAI principles, which tackle issues such as poverty, waste, human rights and global warming.

Third-year English student Amy has been selected as a Campus Director for the ‘Millennium Fellowship Cambridge Campus’ alongside King’s College undergraduate Oishika Ganguly. 

Amy Bottomley
Amy has been awarded a Millennium Fellowship by the United Nations Academic Impact and Millennium Campus Network.

The Millennium Fellowship Class of 2020 features 1,428 undergraduates on 80 campuses in 20 countries. The successful Fellows were picked from thousands of applicants across the world to lead initiatives at their universities.

Sam Vaghar, Executive Director and co-founder of MCN, said: "Twelve extraordinary undergraduates at Cambridge were chosen from over 15,000 applicants as Millennium Fellows this year. Amy Bottomley and Oishika Ganguly have been selected as Campus Directors to help curate the experience for the cohort at Cambridge. These 12 undergraduate leaders are demonstrating through scholarship and action how to meaningfully contribute to society with empathy, humility, and inclusion as guiding values.

"Amy's commitments – from building bridges of understanding through a film festival centering narratives in Iraq, to advocating for students from non-traditional backgrounds – affirms human dignity in this vital time in our world."

Amy is Access Officer for St John’s College JCR, the undergraduate student council, and is also co-founder of The Cambridge Access Movement. She said: “I’m thrilled to be awarded a highly competitive Millennium Fellowship. We have some great initiatives in the pipeline.”

Launched in 2013, the Millennium Fellowship has been in partnership for two years with the UNAI, which aligns higher education institutions with the UN in supporting and contributing to the realisation of UN goals and mandates. The MCN is a global non-profit network that brings together and trains young leaders for social impact on campus and in the community.

Ramu Damodaran, Chief of UNAI, said: “When we created the United Nations Academic Impact to foster a culture of intellectual social responsibility, we considered ‘intellect’ not as something remote or esoteric, but rather as a quality innate in every thinking individual. Our collaboration with MCN will allow students to demonstrate how the wisdom and thought they invest in their formal curriculum can be extended to a greater purpose of common good, lending their strengths to their communities and their world and, in turn, being enriched by them.”

Mr Vaghar added: “On every campus and in every community, student leaders are committed to making positive contributions while committed to our ethos: empathetic, humble, inclusive leadership. Emerging leaders need requisite training, connections, and recognition to deepen their social impact as undergraduates and throughout their careers. Partnering with UNAI enables us to engage more students, providing a powerful framework to help them convene, take action, and elevate the important contributions they make. 

“I congratulate Amy for bold commitment to strengthen community and help make UN goals reality.”

The other 10 Cambridge Millennium Fellows are: Alexander Roberts, Emma Bryan, Eszter Brandt, Oliver Moodie, Olivia Byrne, Olivia Taylor, Pippa Prendergast-Coates, Tomos Wood, Yulim Kim and Zoe Clarke. The Class of 2020 are due to graduate in an online ceremony on 18 November.

Published: 10/9/2020

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